Lou cor gai la tèsto flourido
E la faren tant que voudren
En aio! En aio!”
It was, in truth, most unfortunate that it all happened so: for Rixende had watched the whole of the scene from the moment when she sent the old curé peremptorily to order Bertrand to come back to her. But instead of delivering the message he seemed to have mixed himself up with all those noisy louts, and to have become a part of that group that stood gaping around the girl Nicolette. Rixende saw how Bertrand greeted the girl, how he was soon surrounded by a rowdy, chattering throng, she saw how he tried to kiss the girls, how he embraced the women, how happy he seemed amongst all these people: so happy, in fact, that he appeared wholly to have forgotten her, Rixende. And she was forced to wait till it was his good pleasure to remember her. No wonder that this spoilt child of fashionable Versailles lost her temper the while. Her horse was still restive, his boring tired her: she could not trot off by herself, chiefly because she would not have cared to ride alone in this strange and dour country where she was a complete stranger. True! it was selfish and thoughtless of Bertrand thus to forget her. He was only away from her side a few minutes—six at most—but these were magnified into half an hour, and she was really not altogether to blame for greeting him with black looks, when presently he came back to her, leading that stupid peasant wench by the hand, and speaking just as if nothing had happened, and he had done nothing that required forgiveness.
“This is Nicolette Deydier, my Rixende,” he said quite unconcernedly. “Though she is so young, she is my oldest friend. I sincerely hope that you and she——”
“Mademoiselle Deydier and I,” Rixende broke in tartly, “can make acquaintance at a more propitious time. But I have been kept too long for conversation with strangers now. I pray you let us go hence, Bertrand; the heat, the sun, and all the noise have given me a headache.”
At the first petulant words Nicolette had quietly withdrawn her hand from Bertrand’s grasp. She stood by silent, deeply hurt by the other’s rudeness, vaguely commiserating with Bertrand for the sorry figure which he was made to cut. He did his best to pacify his somewhat vixenish-tempered fiancée, and in his efforts did certainly forget to make amends to Nicolette, and after a hasty, kindly pressure of her hand, he paid no further heed to her.
Only when Rixende, with a vicious cut at her horse with her riding-crop, gave the signal for departure, did Bertrand send back a farewell smile to Nicolette. She stood there for a long, long while on the edge of the road; even while a cloud of white dust hid the two riders from her view, she gazed out in the direction where they had vanished.
So this was the lovely Rixende, the woman whom Bertrand had loved even before he had set eyes on her: the lady of his dreams, whom he was going to nickname Riande, because she would be always laughing; and he would love her so much and so tenderly that she would never long for the gaieties of Paris and Versailles, but be content to live with him in his fair home of Provence, where the flower of the gentian in the spring and the dome of heaven above would seem but the mirrors of her blue eyes.
With a tightening at her heart-strings, Nicolette thought of the dainty face with its delicate, porcelain-like skin puckered up with lines of petulance, the gentian-blue eyes with their hard, metallic glitter, and the tiny mouth with the thin red lips set into a pout. And she sighed, because she had also noticed at the same time that there was a look of discontent and weariness in Bertrand’s face when he finally rode away at the bidding of his imperious queen.